


Peace to Men, Now and Forever More, Amen

by Algy Swinburne (milverton)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Eve, Christmas Party, Christmas Presents, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mistletoe, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milverton/pseuds/Algy%20Swinburne
Summary: Fun with mistletoe and gifts of all sorts at 221b’s annual Christmas Eve do.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60
Collections: 2020 New Years Fic Exchange





	Peace to Men, Now and Forever More, Amen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ixia_ixora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixia_ixora/gifts).



> Dear ixia_ixora,
> 
> You suggested a holiday party and family stuff, so here we are. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!!

Sherlock watches Mrs Hudson flit about the sitting room with undisguised irritation.

Earlier this week, John, Rosie, and Mrs Hudson had stopped by to help decorate the tree and, since then, Mrs Hudson has been a fixture of the sitting room, turning up like clockwork to add more tinsel, fairy lights, ribbons, twee figurines, etcetera.

Sherlock is rather suffocated by pine and angels and peppermint scented candles at this point.

“Mrs Hudson, I don’t think it’s possible for this room to be any more festive than it already is. I think there’s a quota on that sort of thing.”

Mrs Hudson tuts as she affixes a red nose to the bison skull. “Oh, hush, you. Don’t you want the flat to look nice for the party?”

It’s become a tradition of sorts to throw a Christmas Eve do at 221b. Heaven knows why. Might’ve been John’s doing. And every year, against Sherlock’s will, the party becomes more and more expansive by way of decorations and guests. This year, Sherlock’s to have his parents, John, Rosie, Molly, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Bill Wiggins, and Saville Row Satan in attendance.

Last year, there hadn’t been a party; they’d opted to have the celebration at Sherlock’s parents’s house on Christmas Day. That Christmas Eve had been very sombre at 221b, as it had been the first Christmas Eve that Sherlock had spent without John since they’d shared the flat (not counting the years he was quite literally dead to the world). It’s embarrassing, how miserable Sherlock had been. Christmas Eve is just another day, no different than any other day of the year, or at least it should’ve felt that way. Yet he’d never felt so alone.

Sherlock’s never truly hated the party. He _may_ have even enjoyed it once or twice. But this year, it’s year two without John. John will attend the party, but he isn’t _here_ , and while John has been at 221b more and more often in the past year, it isn’t quite the same as them sharing the flat. John has nothing tethering him to his sad little flat in Chelmsford; Mary is gone, but John remains, prefers to live with her ghost rather than live with Sherlock. It cuts Sherlock to the quick more than when Mary was alive—having John back at 221b is attainable, but John elects not to return to him.

Beggars can’t be choosers, Sherlock supposes. At the very least, John’s still in his life, which is something that almost hadn’t been a certainty just a year ago. And they’ve come so very far since.

“What do you think?” Mrs Hudson is asking, pulling him away from his bitter ruminations. She sweeps her arm to indicate the mantle, where facsimiles of quirky Victorian era-illustrated Christmas cards are lined up in a neat row.

“Charming,” Sherlock says flatly.

Mrs Hudson places her hands on her hips and gives the sitting room a final shufti. “I think it’s nearly done, but I’ll come round tomorrow to do some final touches. Don’t make a mess of the place just yet, we’ve only three more days to go!”

\--

The day before Christmas Eve, Sherlock returns home late from Barts to find that Mrs Hudson has indeed stopped by, though the only decoration she’s added to the already-bursting sitting room is a sprig of mistletoe in the entranceway to the kitchen.

Sherlock rolls his eyes but thinks nothing more of it.

\--

“--used the diamond-dusted ribbon tied around his wife’s Christmas present to cut through the bars and escape his cell,” Lestrade is telling his riveted audience.

“Incredible,” Dad gushes.

“Nah. Ain’t possible. Wouldn’t’ve been enough diamond dust,” Wiggins says.

“How’d no one see him?” Molly asks.

Lestrade enjoys recounting that particular case to people--it _had_ been a remarkable prison escape and is suitably seasonal--so Sherlock tunes it out. Instead, he thinks fondly back to a biography he’d read on Joseph Lister around Christmastime in 2008, wonders at how it’d feel to plunge his bare hands into a corpse’s chest cavity ( _de rigueur_ pre-germ theory).

“Hot toddy, anyone? Made extra,” John says as he swaggers into the sitting room, holding up two steaming mugs of the stuff, and Sherlock forgoes thoughts of slick organs (for the most part) to turn his full attention to John.

“Oh, yes, please, John!” Mummy says enthusiastically, never one to say no to a tipple, especially one with whiskey.

She raises Rosie off her lap and passes her over to Mrs Hudson so she can freely accept the drink. Rosie lets out a squeal of indignant protest at being womanhandled, but quickly restores an alliance with Mrs Hudson when Mrs Hudson boops her nose.

“Oi, Doc, can I get some more of this?” Wiggins asks, raising his empty wineglass.

John sideyes him. “What’s that, then?”

“Dunno. The fancy shit.”

“That would be the port,” Mycroft oozes, leaning urbanely against the kitchen entryway in a too-formal three-piece suit and observing the festivities with the air of an anthropologist.

“Sure,” Wiggins says. “And get me a couple of those bacon-wrapped whatsits.” With spectacular restraint, John wordlessly snatches up Wiggins’s glass and heads back toward the kitchen, but he doesn’t make it there, stopped in his tracks by a hollered, “One more thing, Doc!”

John's shoulders are drawn up to his ears. He pivots, looking thunderous. “ _What_ , Billy?”

Wiggins jabs a yellowed finger in the air. John looks up and goes rigid.

He hadn’t noticed it, but of course he hadn’t.

“Go on, then,” Wiggins says cheekily. “Give MI-5 a snog.”

John turns his head in the manner of a condemned man facing his executioner.

Sherlock’s stomach flip-flops as he grips the arms of his chair and scowls at Mycroft, but the toffee-nosed gargoyle doesn’t pay Sherlock any mind, too busy channeling disdain at John. Sherlock wills Mycroft to make eye contact. They’ve often been able to communicate without words, and he’d very much like to telegraph a message: _Do not dare stop Hate your entire existence stop Fuck off full stop._

“I suppose if we were to choose just one of the many cultural interpretations of mistletoe,” Mycroft begins, a blessed interruption of the charged silence that’d fallen, “the most apropos one for the good doctor and myself would be the Roman interpretation, which is that of peace. Enemies of war met and reconciled under mistletoe. Though, I am rather certain that this reconciliation was not accomplished with a…,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, vomits more than says the word, “kiss.”

“Yes, it’s very similar to the Scandinavian tradition,” Dad pipes up excitedly. “For them, standing under mistletoe was the place for a truce--whether you were a soldier or a spouse. Kissing was, of course, the spouse’s means of reconciliation.”

“But why can’t soldiers kiss and make up?” Molly asks diplomatically.

“Yeah!” Wiggins agrees spiritedly, clearly hoping to get in Molly’s good graces, but Molly doesn’t notice the attempt.

Dad looks chastened, and Mummy shakes her head, disappointed.

“Because the ancient Romans would have objected to it,” Mycroft says snootily. “In fact, it would have been punishable by death. The Greeks on the other hand--”

“Why have various cultures over millenia taken a toxic plant and placed such incongruous meanings upon it? What’s the damn _point_?” Sherlock finds himself interjecting.

He wishes he hadn’t. Everyone’s looking at him now.

Mycroft’s regarding him with a shadow of amusement. “It’s a fundamental human trait to create meaning where there wasn’t any before.”

“O-kay,” John says cautiously. “While this philosophical discussion is happening, I’m going to pour one out to celebrate the fact that I’ve just dodged a kiss with Mycroft.”

John raises his mug, locking eyes with Sherlock and giving him a wink.

Sherlock smirks and raises his glass in salute.

Mycroft rolls his eyes as Lestrade bellows out a “Here, here!”

—

Later in the evening, Rosie is showered with gifts then put to bed in the cot they’d installed in John’s old bedroom, leaving the adults to their own devices.

Sherlock notices Wiggins lurking under the mistletoe, leering at Molly. He couldn’t possibly be more obvious unless he stamped his affections across his forehead.

“Hey, guv?” Wiggins yell-whispers at Sherlock. Sherlock pretends not to hear him, desultorily reaches over his shoulder and unshelves a book. “Guv!” Sherlock begins to read about the history of the Old Bailey. “ _Shezza!_ ”

Sherlock slams the book closed and sighs hugely. “What is it, Wiggins?”

“You gonna make me scream it or what?” he asks pointedly, and Sherlock makes a huffy to-do of getting up and heading over. “Do me a--”

“Molly isn’t interested. Surely, you of all people can see that.”

“Nah. She’s been looking at me all night,” Wiggins says, smoothing down his wrinkled t-shirt. “It’s the shirt, I think. Brings out the ocean blue of me eyes.”

Lestrade drunkenly shouts, “Oi! Come on you two, give us a snog.”

Sherlock tuts. “Would someone please replace Lestrade’s whiskey with water?”

Lestrade scrunches up his nose and mimics Sherlock (poorly) at Mrs Hudson, who giggles into her hand.

Wiggins eyes Sherlock critically. “Sorry, boss, but I see us as father-son--”

“No.”

“--as mentor-mentee. Professional, like. You want posterity to know you as someone who made moves on his most gifted acolyte?”

“‘Most gifted’ is exceedingly generous.”

“Sorry, but what’s the bloody point of the mistletoe?” Lestrade complains. “Someone’s got to actually get bloody well snogged beneath it.”

“How about you, Gregory?” Mummy suggests, a touch cutting in tone.

Lestrade affects outrage. “Mrs Holmes! In front of your husband?”

Mummy bursts out laughing. The tips of Dad’s ears are a violent pink.

“Someone swap with the boss so we can do this proper,” Wiggins says, looking directly at Molly, who blinks back, oblivious.

Sherlock bristles. “Why should _you_ get the swap?”

“Since when d’ _you_ want to get snogged?” Wiggins volleys back.

A throat is cleared, and both Wiggins and Sherlock stop glaring at each other to look at the interloper.

John looks oddly unsettled, empty mug in hand.

“Sorry to ruin this heartwarming exchange. But.” Sherlock has the wild thought of shoving Wiggins away and pulling in John to stand in Wiggins’s stead. “I just wanted to....”

John sidesteps between Sherlock and Wiggins, back turned to Sherlock, and Sherlock’s eyes drop down and up in a flash, possibly stealing a look at part of John’s body that is enticingly pert in his jeans, possibly not.

When Sherlock meets Wiggins’s eyes again, he is caught off guard by the thoughtful look on Wiggins’s face.

“Ah,” Wiggins drawls.

Sherlock’s lip twitches. It’d slipped his mind that Wiggins isn’t, in fact, an idiot.

“ _Shut up_.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You were thinking. It was loud.” A last ditch effort, he adds, “And you’re wrong.”

Wiggins arches a sardonic eyebrow. “But how can I be wrong if I learned from the best.”

As much as he’d like to, Sherlock really can't argue with that.

John once again slips between them, mug refilled, making a beeline for the sofa.

“Hey, Doc.”

John stops, hangs his head, doesn’t even bother turning around. “What.”

“I got a question.”

John turns around stiffly. “Then ask it.”

“Who’d you prefer? Me or Shezza?”

Sherlock inhales sharply.

He could absolutely _murder_ Wiggins. Creatively, too.

John flicks his eyes between Wiggins to Sherlock rapidly. “Sorry?”

“You went under the mistletoe and someone’s gotta get kissed. According to the rules.”

“I was getting a top-up,” John says flintily. “And what rules? There are no rules.”

“It’s literally the only rule. You go under it, you swap spit. So. Go on.” Wiggins sniffs. “But before you make your decision you should have all the facts.” Sherlock is just on the verge of throttling him when he finishes with a dead-eyed, “I’ve always thought you were a dishy geezer.”

“That right?” John says with a knife’s edge smile. “Too bad I’ve always thought you were--and are--a tremendous knobhead.”

“John,” Mrs Hudson chides.

“Aw, man.” Wiggins looks at Sherlock with the faintest quirk of an eyebrow, almost mute encouragement. Sherlock blinks, surprised by Wiggins’s sudden generosity of spirit. “Guess that’s me out.”

“You were never in,” John says, his eyes sliding sideways to Sherlock, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

Sherlock has to look away to cover his own smile.

\--

When Mummy and Mrs Hudson run into each other on their ways to and from the kitchen, Sherlock winces preemptively.

“Well! What do you say, Violet?”

“It’s always a yes for you, Martha!”

Mummy leans over to give Mrs Hudson a peck on the lips, John and Lestrade’s wolf-whistles as a backing track.

“Hot,” Dad says, unfortunately, aloud.

Sherlock wishes for the sweet release of death.

Mycroft looks as afflicted as Sherlock feels. “This stops. _Now_.”

“Your mother was young once,” Dad says wistfully.

“Stop it, Siger,” Mummy says, swatting the air. “The boys don’t want to know about all that.”

“How incisive of you, Mummy,” Sherlock says. “I can’t think of anything I’d like to know _less_ about.”

“Speak for yourself. Some of us want to know,” John says with a wicked grin.

Sherlock snarls at him.

“There were just such beautiful women at Cambridge,” Mummy says. “I couldn’t stop thinking about them.”

John makes a noise of commiseration at the back of his throat, and Sherlock frowns at him.

“Siger was there, too, of course.” Mummy pats Dad’s knee. “He was also beautiful. My beautiful man.”

Dad beams.

“There weren’t any women in my maths courses, sadly,” Mummy bleats on.

“What a shame,” Mrs Hudson says.

“It was the ‘50s, after all. But I do remember this _lovely_ peroxide blonde in my elective course, the dead spit of a Bond girl--”

“ _Enough_ ,” Mycroft booms, turning everyone but Mummy ashen.

“Mycroft Holmes,” Mummy reprimands with the authority of a drill sergeant, turning Mycroft into a cowed rabbit. “You know better than to raise your voice to me.”

Sherlock looks between the two of them with unadulterated glee.

Mycroft can’t meet Mummy’s eyes. “I...apologise, Mummy.”

“Yes, I should think so,” Mummy says grimly.

Finally, at long last, Sherlock is starting to enjoy Christmas.

\--

Mummy and Dad leave early to catch a train, Mummy planting an embarrassing number of departing kisses on Sherlock and Mycroft’s reluctant cheeks, followed by Wiggins, who’d been expected to attend another party, seemingly popular amongst his Irregulars cohort. Mycroft, thankfully, is next to go, feigning work as an excuse.

Sherlock plays _Sussex Carol_ on violin for the thinned-out crowd, some of whom are maudlin with drink, and when Sherlock trills the last note, his audience breaks into gentle applause.

“Lovely, Sherlock. Just lovely,” Mrs Hudson says, a twinkle of a tear in her eye.

Molly and John nod in agreement, their eyes equally starry.

“You available for children’s birthday parties?” Lestrade asks, grinning.

Sherlock smiles tautly. “Not in this lifetime.”

After the violin’s packed away, Sherlock heads to the kitchen and makes a fresh batch of tea. He lets the soft conversation from the sitting room fill his head with a soothing buzz, melts as the whiskey he’d had sporadically throughout the day sings sweetly in his veins, and places his face close to the steam coming up from the kettle as the water roils. He feels...cosy. It’s not a typical feeling, at least not these days. He often spends too much time alone in this flat buried in the chaos of his ceaselessly moving mind. It’s a much welcomed departure from the norm.

As he’s pouring steeped tea out of the kettle, Sherlock hears someone (John, by the sound of the tread) approach, feels fingers dragging lazily across his back.

He looks over his shoulder to find John on his way to the fridge.

“That was marvelous, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shrugs, turning around and leaning against the counter, cradling his teacup in hand and watching John (and keeping his eyes _up_ , since he’d rather learned his lesson) as he peers in the fridge.

“It was a favourite of Mémé’s. I’d memorised it for her when I was small.”

After some deliberation, John expectedly chooses a beer, closes the fridge door, and begins his search for the bottle opener.

“Your grandmum?”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, feeling blindly on the counter until his pinky comes into contact with the opener. “She taught me how to play.”

“There’s not one Holmes who isn’t up to their ears in talent, is there?”

“Actually,” Sherlock says, holding up the opener and giving it a wave. “Mémé was Mummy’s mother. Not a Holmes.”

“Christ.” John takes the opener from Sherlock, pries off the bottle cap. He’s standing very close; Sherlock can smell beer, lemon, chocolate, a whiff of cologne, and sweat, and it’s very much an appealing mélange, but Sherlock presses his arse against the counter hard enough to leave a bruise, is practically on his tip-toes, is nearly perched atop the counter in his effort to distance himself as much as possible from John. “My family seem like a bunch of numpties in comparison.”

“I suspect that isn’t true.”

John looks up, pleased and soft. “No?”

“If you are a reflection of your family, then I’d imagine that they’re quite impressive.”

John downcasts his eyes and smiles as he reaches around Sherlock--even though there is no need, Sherlock takes up just a small portion of the counter--to deposit the bottle cap and opener on the countertop.

“My god, this is a Christmas miracle. Have you just admitted that I’m not a complete idiot?”

Sherlock’s lips curl. “Saying it once a year won’t kill me.”

John chuffs a laugh out of his nose and takes a long pull of his beer, keeping his eyes fixed on Sherlock’s as he does, and Sherlock tries not to look at the stretch of his neck. It’s difficult not to, in this kind of proximity. This kind of _unnecessary_ proximity. John hadn’t moved out of Sherlock’s personal space after acquiring the bottle opener, and a half-step forward would bring them flush together.

When John’s finished taking his overlong sip of beer, his demeanour is markedly different. He looks uncomfortable.

“Now that I have you here, there’s...something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Sherlock raises cool, inquisitive eyebrows, contradictory to the stirrings of internal tumult that John’s unspoken words inspire.

“I wanted to ask--and take as much time as you need to think about it, yeah? My lease is up next month, and Chelmsford is. Well. Not London. I know I’m here a lot anyway. And I know we have cases. I just don’t--” John looks down at the floor, in the space between them, his brows furrowed. “I don’t want to be reminded of Mary anymore.” He looks up, attention fixed on something over Sherlock’s shoulder. “I know it sounds horrible. I know I should want to preserve her memory for Rosie. But it’s driving me round the twist to just _be there_. All her stuff, all the memories. Most aren’t...good. Obviously. So. I mean, I’m also bored out of my fucking skull." He sighs the sigh of a world-weary man. "Again, maybe not fair to Rosie, yeah, she’s already got playmates in the neighbourhood, and bringing up a child in Chelmsford makes more sense, I guess, than London. More space, families, whatever. But I can’t do it anymore.” He looks Sherlock in the eye. “I want to start over. And, besides, Rosie’s...family is here. So. I hope you’d take pity on me and allow me back in. Rosie and I, I mean. If you’d have us, that is.”

“Yes.”

John looks surprised. “Yes?”

“Of course, yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

The relief that floods over John’s face is perplexing. Did John really not think Sherlock would say yes to such a request? That he would deny John anything?

John gives Sherlock a chummy slap on the arm, squeezes his bicep. His smile is brilliant, and he lets out a little disbelieving laugh.

Sherlock mirrors John’s smile, genuine and effusive.

“Thank you, Sherlock. Really. Thank you.”

“No need to thank me; in fact, I should thank you. While, nominally, this is my home, it’s been less of one while you’ve been gone.”

As quickly as it had appeared, John’s smile fades.

Sherlock wonders with creeping unease if what he’s said has gone too far. They are not demonstrative with each other, as a rule, but there’s just something about this damn day that’s made Sherlock disturbingly _precious_.

But then John slides his hand down Sherlock’s arm, watching Sherlock with a kind of dreamy solemnity, and Sherlock turns his head, drops his eyes to watch John’s hand's journey to his forearm. From the corner of his eye, Sherlock sees John lick his lips, and Sherlock turns forward and zeroes in on the silvery spot of saliva John’s left, and then John’s eyes drop to Sherlock’s lips, his weight shifts forward, so slight, and Sherlock suddenly isn’t breathing, and they’re _so close_ —

“Boys! Time for presents!”

\--

Sherlock ensconces himself in his armchair and closes his eyes.

People are speaking, but he hasn’t the faintest idea of or concern with what they’re saying, because what Sherlock had learned in the past twenty minutes is gobsmacking information to take in and digest; it rather requires his full attention.

John is moving back into 221b.

But not only that--oh, no.

John nearly _kissed him._

 _They_ had nearly _kissed_ , the two of them, of their own free will (not as an obligation to a stupid pagan plant).

John had wanted to kiss him.

Sherlock is electrified with want and need, but also something new: _hope_.

A hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and warm, hoppy breath on his ear grounds him back to the present.

And presents.

“Surprise,” John says, low, into his ear, holding a rectangle-shaped gift aloft at Sherlock’s eye-level. Numbly, Sherlock takes the gift, wanting very much to take John with it, to pull him down into his lap and kiss him. “But probably not really.”

They’d (or Molly had, really) decided to do a Secret Santa, so as to be accommodating to everyone’s personal budgets. But as with everything in life, Sherlock hadn’t been able to experience the thrill of a mystery remaining a mystery for very long. Sherlock had known John was his gift-giver the moment the man had walked through the door hours ago.

“Definitely not really,” Sherlock manages, though only barely.

He releases the gift tucked between his hip and the arm of the chair and looks up and over. John is looking down at him with vague amusement--and with something else. Fondness, perhaps.

Sherlock quite likes this; likes John looking at him like he's something to cherish.

With a tiny, secretive smile, Sherlock holds out the gift. “Surprise?”

John gives him an equally playful smile, taking his gift and stepping back. “Of course.”

 _Of course_ they’d drawn each other's names in the exchange. (Sherlock had been reasonably certain, at one point, that other people existed. But perhaps he’d been mistaken.)

Sherlock hefts his gift--feels like a jewelry box--and tears off the ribbon and wrapping paper to find...a jewelry box. Never before has he been so disappointed to be right.

Sherlock undoes the latch and opens the lid. Placed in the centre velvet compartment is a postcard, and it becomes clear that John had deliberately chosen a jewelry box as the vessel for the true gift to throw off Sherlock’s deductions.

He couldn't possibly love ( _love_?) John any more.

Sherlock picks up the postcard. It reads:

Ealing

29/10/88

POST CARD

THE ADDRESS ONLY TO BE WRITTEN ON THIS SIDE

_To the High St. Ealing Police Station Sergent._

Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat. He turns the postcard around. It continues:

_Beware there is two women I want here. They are bastards and I mean to have them my knife is still in good order it is a students knife and I hope you liked the half of kidney. I am Jack the Ripper._

“What is it?” Molly asks eagerly.

Sherlock stares down at it, in awe.

Lestrade decides he can’t bear the anticipation and lumbers over to get a look. He reels back and gives a low whistle, then leans back over Sherlock’s shoulder and squints at the postcard. “ _Bloody hell_. Is that really—“

“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, stroking the postcard.

“Postcard from Jack the Ripper,” Lestrade informs the room.

“What!” Molly squeaks excitedly, then stumbles over herself to get a glimpse.

“How lovely,” Mrs Hudson coos.

“Does that say October ‘88?” Molly asks, leaning over Sherlock’s other shoulder. “Right before--”

“The last of the Canonical Five killings,” Sherlock and Molly finish in unison.

“Jesus, John, you must’ve spent a bomb on that,” Lestrade says. “Last I remember is Catherine Eddowes’s shawl going for 3 million quid a few years back. I mean, maybe this isn’t on the same level. But, still.”

“S’alright,” John says laconically, sniffing.

Sherlock fears that the designer jumpers he’s gifted to John, although sorely needed, have turned out to be inadequate and thoughtless in comparison to...this.

“Sherlock, you dropped the card.” Mrs Hudson points out the said card forgotten on the floor.

Sherlock picks it up, reads in John’s curving doctor’s scrawl:

> _Dear Sherlock,_
> 
> _I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I appreciate you, even though at times I’ve been a complete arsehole and may not have acted like I do. So here I am now, saying it in writing, because I’m shit at this sort of stuff. And holiday cards are made precisely for this kind of treacly rubbish. Thank you. There’s really no way I could ever repay you for all you’ve done for me. Perhaps a bit fucked up and ironic, but this gift is to celebrate that--to celebrate the new life you gave me, 8 years ago, now--in a small way. I wish I could give you more._
> 
> _Last year, I didn’t think we’d make it out alive, or together. I still believe I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m grateful for it. Thank you for still letting me be your friend, even after everything._
> 
> _I hope to be at your side for many Christmases to come._
> 
> _Happy Christmas._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _John_

A flurry of activity bursts around Sherlock--the overloud crunch of gift wrappings and trappings being balled up for disposal and the hum of excited natterings over new gifts--so he enters the cosy room he’s built in his Mind Palace in honour of John to dissect the card in peace.

Sherlock eventually rejoins reality and finds that everyone has vacated the flat except for John, who is watching him sedately from the sofa, legs spread wide, propping up a half-drunk beer bottle on his thigh.

“And he’s back.”

Sherlock glances at his watch, which reads 23:24, then glances at the state of the room. It’s surprisingly tidy for a room that’d just hosted nine people. John must have cleaned.

And he’s still holding John’s card; it’d softened with his sweat and bent with his grip. Best say something about that. "Thank you.”

“Wasn’t so bad. Our friends are pretty fastidious.”

“For the, um, gift.”

“Oh, right, yeah. ‘Course. And thanks for the jumpers; none too subtle, that.”

“‘I wish I could give you more?’” Sherlock parrots, mouth dry, because, even after all his puzzling, he hadn’t been able to parse it.

John follows his train of thought without fault. “Yeah. I do.”

“A curious statement, as you have given me more than I deserve.”

John takes a pull of his beer (always dramatic), his eyes never leaving Sherlock’s, then places the bottle down on the coffee table. With deliberateness, he raises his eyes toward the ceiling and Sherlock follows his line of sight to the kitchen entryway, where the sprig of mistletoe is conspicuously absent.

“Just to clarify, we’re not talking about the murder postcard, are we.”

“Possibly...no."

“What I meant--what I wrote,” John says, after a long moment, “it was a bit selfish.”

“Was it?”

“It’s _my_ wish. I don’t know if it’s yours. I mean, I didn’t, really, before. But then, earlier, in the kitchen, I thought--I’m wondering now if it might be yours too.” John slides a hand into his pocket, drawing Sherlock’s eyes to the movement, and withdraws the mistletoe. He turns it over and over in his hand, smiles down at it ruefully. “I wish I didn’t need an excuse to kiss you.”

Sherlock’s heart is a steady drumbeat. “And you don’t.”

John lifts his head, eyes shining, the mistletoe slipping from his hand.

They stare at each other for a very long time.

At some juncture, Sherlock shoots up onto his feet. “Perhaps a kiss before the new year?”

John scrambles to stand up, knocking over his beer. “Brilliant idea, that.”

They meet in the middle of the room and reach for each other.

And then they’re kissing--shared muffled noises of bone-deep _relief_ and pleasure, their lips moistening, slick with saliva, tongues in mouths and hands roaming from backs to shoulders to arms to arses.

When they take a moment to sup in air, John’s lips quirk up. “For the record, I’d much rather kiss you than Billy.”

Sherlock nudges his face into John’s neck, and John runs a hand up to rake through Sherlock’s hair. “Shocking news, to be sure.”

John giggles, and Sherlock can feel the vibrations in his nose, mouth, in everything pressed up against John. He kisses John’s pulsating carotid artery, presses a kiss to John’s jaw, angles his head and dips down so that their mouths--warm breath with a sweet scent of alcohol intermingling--hover a hair’s breadth apart.

“Shouldn’t have waited so long to ask about moving back in,” John says, quiet, eyelids heavy.

“Shouldn’t have waited so long for...this.”

John gives Sherlock a bruising kiss, and Sherlock wraps his arms more tightly around John.

“Fuck it,” John says against Sherlock’s mouth. “We’ve the rest of our lives to make up for it.”

Sherlock’s mind dials down to a peaceful hum as he kisses John in enthusiastic agreement, leads him to the sofa, and they peel off layers of clothes, skin meeting skin, and kiss until it’s Christmas Day.

**Author's Note:**

> A few things:
> 
> 1\. Title is taken from Sussex Carol (which you may know as its more popular title, On Christmas Night). It’s lovely, indeed, [on solo violin. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SjiQyTvIBc)
> 
> 2\. Anyone out there a fan of the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series with Ronald Howard? I lifted Lestrade's diamond-dusted ribbon prison escape story from there. If you've not checked it out, do! It's in my top 3 favorite SH adaptations; so fun and underrated.
> 
> 3\. That Jack the Ripper postcard [exists.](http://allthatsinteresting.com/jack-the-ripper-postcard) It was auctioned off in April 2018, [estimated to go for £600-£900 ($800-$1,200)](https://www.grandauctions.co.uk/auction/i-am-jack-the-ripper-39-card), but [ended up going for £22k ($29k).](https://mashable.com/2018/05/03/jack-the-ripper-postcard/) I’m going to pretend that John either got it at its estimate or pulled some strings with connections he and Sherlock made over their many years of crimefightin’ to get it at a decent price. The articles I’ve linked go into further detail about why the postcard is unique. And I’ll stop banging on about it now.
> 
> To a happier and healthier (dear god, please) 2021!


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